Naira Badalyan

Professor Aaron Fichtelberg from University of Delaware Newark, DE United States, who is attending the Second Global Forum Against the Crime of Genocide in Yerevan, called for not being too judgemental when assessing the actions of the Armenian public and political figures toward Ottoman leaders.In his words, Soghomon Tehlirian's revenge against Ottoman leaders should not be qualified as a wrong act. He explained that in such cases, the state takes certain step, but non-state persons make steps too. From this point of view, the expert said, liquidation of the Ottoman leaders was certainly justified. To recall, in 1913, the power in Turkey was seized by Enver Pasha, Talaat Pasha and Cemal Pasha, who later organized the Armenian Genocide. Soghomon Tehlirian was an Ottoman Armenian who assassinated Talaat Pasha, the former Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire, in Berlin on March 15, 1921. The assassination was a part of Operation Nemesis, planned by theArmenian Revolutionary Federation as revenge for the Armenian Genocideorchestrated by the Ottoman Imperial Government during World War I. Talaat Pasha had been convicted and sentenced to death in absentia in the Turkish courts-martial of 1919-20, and was viewed as the main orchestrator of the genocide. After a two-day trial Tehlirian was found not guilty by the German court, and freed. Tehlirian is considered a national hero by Armenians.